The 9 Lives of The Outlaw Known as Crazy Cat

Post navigation

I’ve been dreaming about this for years! So, I finally decided to do something about it – I bought a large format camera, chemicals and equipment, and a month ago I attended a wetplate workshop hosted by Sarah Lycksten in Sweden, and have been busy shooting plates since.

I’ll make a dedicated gallery for my wetplate work over at julieloen.com as soon as I have enough decent plates to show off. In the meantime, you can follow my progress and fails on Instagram – I’ve set up an account dedicated exclusively to my wetplate work called Aether & Instant.

Yeee-haw! The exhibition of images from the photo book I made in collaboration with Ingvild Eiring kicks off at Cyan Salong in Oslo next Friday. Prints, originals and, of course, the book itself will be for sale.

Here’s what y’all need to know:

Launch party: Friday, September the 16th from 18.00.

Talk, yup… that’s right, Ingvild and I will be rambling on about the project on Thursday the 22nd from 19.00.

The exhibition will be up and running for two weeks, with regular hours from Saturday the 17th to Friday the 30th of September. Open Tuesday – Sunday from 12-15.00. Closed on Mondays.

Ingvild and I will be present at the launch party and the talk, and I will be present at the gallery on the weekends (Friday – Sunday). Stop by and and say howdy! 🙂

I did a shoot recently, with model Ingvild Eiring, that was inspired by Siri Pettersen’s wonderful fantasy series The Raven Rings. To my great delight Siri loved the pictures and posted a whole album with images from the shoot on Facebook. To see more of the images head on over to my photo website julieloen.com

We did the shoot in the woods behind my house. I’ve done many shoots there before and never felt creeped out, but this day was different. Before we got started we came across a dead hare on the trail, and when we were ready to shoot a tree fell over close by us – the sound it made was… Well, it sounded like a troll was smashing through the forest. The rest of the day we didn’t hear a single bird, they were all inexplicably gone. But the forest wasn’t quiet, dead trees swayed in the wind, their shrivelled bodies creaking and screaming like something out of a horror movie.

The 7th Bullet is the third book in the The 9 Lives of the Outlaw Known as Crazy Cat series—a Gothic western that draws upon elements from both horror and crime. It’s a foreboding tale of friendship and grief, madness, and haunts, and seeing a man about a horse.

Lee is offered a chance at freedom—all she has to do is assist a Pinkerton detective during an investigation and sign a contract where she swears to become a law-abiding citizen. She agrees to help the detective, but will she sign the contract and give up her outlawing ways?

The investigation brings her to the arid Bonneville flats and a lodge run by a family of spiritualists. They may or may not be able to talk to the dead, but they certainly have a connection to them.

Y’all! I’ll be at the photo festival Fotoscenen in Oslo on Saturday, selling copies of All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do – The Ballad of Zerelda Glanton. Take a look at the program, it’s chock-full of interesting lectures and talented photographers.

My good friend and often partner in crime Ingvild Eiring does more than model, make-up and costume, she is a terrific sculptor as well. Her speciality is mice in victorian clothing. I asked her to make me a Crazy Cat inspired mouse… and then this happened. Mad Mouse came to life. I couldn’t be happier with the result, every little detail is perfect, from Lee’s (Crazy Cat) whisker scars to a pair of tiny spurs. Everything is handmade, even the clothes are sewn by Ingvild.

Ingvild takes commissions, if you want a custom mouse too, just send an email to: ingvild.eiring@gmail.com

Y’all! I’ve got great news! Zerelda will get a proper exhibition in September at Cyan Studio in Oslo. All the original polaroids featured in the book will be on display (and for sale) along with a selection of bigger prints (also for sale). I’ll get back to y’all with the details in due time before the event.

AND! All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do – The Ballad of Zerelda Glanton is now available at my favourite bookstore in Oslo: Tronsmo AND at Oslo’s darkest and finest fashion haunt: Hevn. Both stores are well worth a visit.

I was going to write a post about why I’m a feminist for today (March 8th), but I have too many beginnings and no ending to that rant. I meant to design a few Cowgrrrl T-shirts too, but I’ve been so swamped with editing my third novel that I ain’t found the time or the inspiration to veer off from working on the book to get around to it. I meant to do a whole mess of things, but time would not allow it. So, instead I give you this – five western movies featuring female protagonists I have enjoyed, and two I am looking forward to seeing.

I’ve lost count of the places I’ve read that Mattie Ross finds a man of true grit in Rooster Cogburn. I won’t argue against the fact that Cogburn does indeed possess a whole damn lot of grit, but to me it is blatantly obvious that Mattie is the one with true grit – the obvious irony in both title and project when she goes searching for a man with true grit, and then it turns out that she is the one who possesses the trait galore herself.

A somber and realistic movie about settlers on the Oregon Trail in 1845. Not your typical western, I’d dare say it’s an anti western in its lack of shoot-outs and action, and with the typical hero character (the mountain man Meek) being, to put it plainly, a buffoon.

The 7th Bullet, the next installment in The 9 Lives of The Outlaw known as Crazy Cat series will soon be complete (within a few months). The story is edited into a cohesive narrative, what remains is polishing and proofreading.

While you wait for the book, I’ve made a soundtrack for it, like I did for Embers at Dawn and An Obelus Wheeze. After (almost) completing my third novel, I’ve found out that the story ain’t “there yet” until the soundtrack flows smoothly. Just like the book, the soundtrack has been put through a rigorous editing process where darlings have been killed and gaps filled. If a song feels out of place or forced, it might of course be the wrong song for the scene, but most often I find that the fault lies in the scene it’s meant to accompany. First and foremost I put together these soundtracks for my own enjoyment, but they are also a great tool to better understand the ebb and flow of the narrative.